Andrew MacKinlay: I support the Government's policy on the regeneration of the Thames Gateway and the need for infrastructure investment. However—[Hon. Members: "Ah."]—I must signal my considerable disappointment that the Government's programme to regenerate the Thames Gateway has not reached fruition, particularly in my area, Thurrock. Will the Minister therefore carpet the chairman of Thurrock urban development corporation and ask him to account for what has been going on for the past two years? Will she also ask her colleagues—

Tony Lloyd: My constituents were used to the neglect of the inner cities under Tory Governments. Since that time there has been investment, and central Government, local government and the private sector have been working together in a way that has put the quality into our inner-city areas and put the hope back into our communities. My right hon. Friend must take no lessons from Conservative Members, who would take us back to those days of abandonment; and will he continue with these far-sighted and sensible policies?

Brian Iddon: What consultation his Department has carried out on how to develop the Supporting People programme.

Phil Woolas: I can indeed. This morning, I attended the Local Government Association and National Housing Federation conference in Church house, with 300 stakeholders, to discuss exactly that issue. I assure my hon. Friend that the objective that she has outlined to the House will be at the forefront of our minds when we publish the findings of the consultation and our conclusions in the summer.

Adam Afriyie: Given the current burden of government in London, with the Mayor, the GLA, the 32 boroughs and the London Development Agency, can the Minister tell us clearly, precisely and specifically the unique functions of the Government office for London, so that we can make a judgment as to whether it is worthwhile?

Ashok Kumar: I share the sentiments expressed by the Prime Minister, and the sympathies expressed to the families for the sacrifices that have been made on our behalf.
	Has my right hon. Friend seen the latest report from the Equal Opportunities Commission? It concludes that one in five private firms pays women far less than men for the same work. That means that 10,000 women in my constituency are losing out. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that constitutes disgraceful discrimination of the highest order in a democratic society in the 21st century? Will he tell me what we as a Labour Government will do to put matters right?

Tony Blair: My hon. Friend is right to point out that such discrimination still exists, although actually the gender pay gap is at an all-time low of some 13 per cent. I look forward to the report from the Women and Work Commission which will be published in the next few weeks. It will not only draw attention to the serious problems raised by my hon. Friend, but provide us with some solutions.

Tony Blair: I do not agree. The Research Councils UK takes those decisions. The key thing for us if we are to meet our Kyoto targets—[Interruption.] If we are to tackle climate change seriously, we need to do two things. First, this country has to meet its Kyoto targets, and we are meeting them, in part through the climate change levy; the right hon. Gentleman remains opposed to it, but it is that which is helping us deliver on the Kyoto targets. Secondly, we have to build international support for action on climate change, which we are doing. The speech last night by the President of United States shows that there is growing consensus that we need to invest more in renewables and in clean technology, in which regard we are leading the way.

Mr. Speaker: I call Bob Marshall-Andrews.

Andrew Dismore: What advantages does my right hon. Friend see arising from the partnership between Jobcentre Plus and Marks & Spencer, which he saw when he visited Brent Cross shopping centre in my constituency last week to hear first hand from lone parents, disabled people and the former homeless, who are now employed by that company in secure employment and worthwhile careers? Does he agree that that provides a valuable example of best practice in what can be achieved in helping disabled people back into work?

Tony Blair: I found it very inspiring to talk to the people in my hon. Friend's constituency, some of whom have been unemployed for many years but who have found work through Jobcentre Plus and the new deal and because Marks & Spencer has realised that people with disabilities could be an excellent work force and there were people who would commit themselves long term to the company. It underlines how important it is that we get more people off incapacity benefit and into work. The pathways to work pilot has been very successful and, as we said last week, we will roll it out across the country.

Ian Paisley: May I associate myself with the remarks already made by others? Our deepest sympathy goes to those who have lost loved ones in the war in Iraq. It has often been said that bereavement is not good at talking. We all know that and we have our own feelings about such matters. I am sure that the whole House will be in the same mind as me on that.
	Has the Prime Minister read the two reports that have just been issued, one by the International Monitoring Commission and the other by the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning? Is he not alarmed that after all that was said against my party when we said, "Don't take what the IRA has said as truth, examine it", the commission, which was set up by the Government, admits that perhaps it was misinformed and that its judgment in September that all arms had been decommissioned was a misjudgment? When a Government—

Graham Allen: Would the Prime Minister accept that many youngsters in deprived constituencies such as mine, often from broken families, arrive at school unable to recognise numbers or letters, or unable even to speak in complete sentences or relate to their fellow pupils? Will the Prime Minister consider putting the teaching of social behaviour at primary school at the same level as the successful campaigns on teaching numeracy and literacy, where the local education authority so wishes?

John Baron: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The personal statement comes first.

Greg Clark: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to protect private gardens from housing development which is out of character with the surrounding area; and for connected purposes.
	The Bill is designed to close a loophole in the planning system that is giving rise to great concern in my constituency and constituencies throughout the country. The problem is essentially that front and back gardens are classified in planning terms as the equivalent of brownfield sites. In other words, they are treated the same as an old gasworks or a disused railway site. As housing development is encouraged on brownfield sites, it is next to impossible for local councils throughout the country to refuse planning applications for developments that they consider to be excessive, even if they want to. The situation has serious consequences for my constituents and those of other hon. Members.
	Let me give hon. Members an illustration of the problem. Forest road in Tunbridge Wells is typical of many roads throughout the country. Developers are buying up houses with big plots on that road. They do not buy them just to redevelop the house, because their eyes are as much on the garden as the house itself. Some of the houses have stood for as long as 100 years. They are some of the most attractive urban houses in our constituencies, but after they have been bought for development, they are demolished and replaced by housing—often in the form of apartment blocks—that covers the whole footprint of the plot.
	Let me describe the consequences of that. The neighbours of such developments live in fear that the property their other side will also be bought. They fear going from living in a leafy street of family houses to being surrounded on both sides by apartment blocks, which was not the type of life that they expected to live. With understandable panic, those people sell to developers. A domino effect occurs on these roads—one after another—as houses fall prey to developers. In a short time, the character of some of our most prized areas is being completely destroyed, although we never would have considered that possible.
	There are three reasons why there is a problem, of which the first is the point about character. We should prize the parts of our towns and cities that are attractive to live in and have proved to be so for upwards of 100 years. They are part of the identity of our towns, and we should cherish and preserve them.
	The second reason is environmental. In towns and cities, our gardens are precious green lungs. They are havens for precious wildlife, insect and bird life. They clean and cool the air and keep down pollution. They also contribute to the drainage of our communities when we have problems with flooding and poor drainage throughout the country. If it were suggested that one of our urban parks or open spaces should be concreted over, there would be uproar and people would march on Parliament to protect those sites. However, as gardens are hidden from view behind houses rather than in public view, they go unnoticed, so little by little we are losing precious green spaces throughout the country.
	The third reason why we should be alarmed by such developments is that although we all want more social and affordable housing, many of the developments are sufficiently small to fall below the threshold that triggers the requirement for such housing. Developers can thus create high-end housing, which is often dense, without making the contribution to affordable development that they would be obliged to make if they were to develop a genuine brownfield site.
	What is to be done about it? I am not going to suggest that we should preserve every garden in the country in aspic—clearly that is not possible, and there is a difficult balance to be struck between housing need and protecting the character of our urban areas—but two principles should apply. The first is that the people who make the decisions should understand their communities. They should be familiar with the character of their areas and accountable to their local electorate. Better the town hall than the Minister in Whitehall when it comes to taking views on the character of a development. We should give back to local communities the power to decide those applications, and not have them taken remotely.
	Secondly, we should not kid ourselves that those are brownfield sites. They are not; they are greenfield sites. They are not what the brownfield site legislation was designed to protect. We delude ourselves if we think that we are making progress in developing brownfield sites when we are ploughing up people's back gardens, with the consequences that I have described. And I am afraid that we are deluding ourselves, because in a statement released just yesterday by the Minister for Housing and Planning, the ODPM praises the
	"new record high of 72 per cent."
	of home building on previously developed land—in other words, brownfield sites.
	In the context of my remarks today that achievement is dubious. We do not know what proportion of that 72 per cent. is gardens rather than industrial sites. In a parliamentary answer to a question that I asked, the Minister admitted on 11 January:
	"there is no information on any loss of privately owned green space."—[Official Report, 11 January 2006; Vol. 441, c. 691W.]
	If we are to have a debate about housing and about balancing development and preserving the character of our towns, we should at least do so on the basis of clarity, honesty and knowing whether we are getting rid of industrial sites or gardens. That is not happening at the moment.
	This Bill seems to have struck a chord right across the country. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] Labour Members and Liberal Democrat Members as well as Conservative Members have added their support to it, and that support has not just come from what one might think of as the leafy south-east. I have had messages of support from the valleys of south Wales, Rochdale, Rotherham and Doncaster, as well as from Teesside. The problem is shared across the country. To quote just one message of support, a correspondent from Rotherham said:
	"We feel that our local council is sympathetic to our distress and they agree that too many mini- estates are being crammed onto unsuitable sites. Unfortunately, we are told that planning permission will almost certainly be granted to avoid an appeal which will then overturn their decision."
	My Bill is simple in its intent: it would remove front and back gardens from the Government's definition of brownfield sites of previous development. If we are to be honest about brownfield sites, we owe it to ourselves to recognise the intention of the designation. If the idea of brownfield sites is to mean anything, it should be about improving the condition of our towns and villages and contributing to environmental progress, not about changing and destroying the characters of areas for ever.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Greg Clark, Michael Fabricant, Mrs. Jacqui Lait, John Penrose, Mr. David Burrowes, Mr. James Arbuthnot, Mr. Jeremy Hunt, Mr. Gerald Howarth, Ms Dari Taylor, Mr. Douglas Carswell, Mrs. Nadine Dorries and Mr. John Maples.

David Davis: I beg to move,
	That this House notes the Home Secretary's proposals to create regional strategic police forces in England and Wales; further notes the Association of Police Authorities' estimate that amalgamations could cost £600 million to implement; further notes that none of the proposed amalgamated forces has the unanimous agreement of the police authorities concerned; expresses concern about the implications of mergers for local accountability, neighbourhood policing and the level of police precepts; regrets the unnecessarily tight timetable for consultation; recognises that the potential changes are the most significant for over thirty years; and calls on the Government to consider alternative proposals to strengthen the ability of forces to deal with serious crime, including sharing services, as recommended by the Association of Police Authorities.
	This is an unusual Opposition debate. Usually, we have a few hours of political combat and knockabout, all of which is very enjoyable, but the Government then carry on as they did before. Today, I shall try something a little different, and offer the Government a serious chance of achieving their stated aim of finding a better way of dealing with serious crime with the wholehearted and consensual support of all the parties in the House. That is appropriate, because the structure and accountability of our police forces and the decentralisation of law enforcement is a constitutional issue that should be resolved on a cross-party basis.
	Let us start with what we agree on. We agree that we want to improve the ability of our police forces to deliver the so-called protective services that deal with murder, terrorism, cross-border crime and so on. We agree that the current organisation may be weak in some police forces on some of those issues. We agree that the policing teams—not necessarily the forces—that deal with those major issues should have the skills and resources to deal with them. Where possible, they should be able to develop experience in dealing with them.
	We do not agree that the organisation that is best suited to deal with terrorism is necessarily the best suited to deal with shoplifting, mugging or burglary. We do not agree that bigger is better for most aspects of policing. Indeed, other issues including the quality of management and leadership, technical skills, proper resourcing and local knowledge are far more important than any imaginary police force-wide economies of scale in the delivery of better policing.
	We do not agree that regionalism is a good model for emergency services in general or police forces in particular. We believe in localism. Regionalism is pseudo-localism, with all the disadvantages of centralisation masquerading under a local label. Most of all, however, we do not agree that this is a policy that should be analysed and proposed in a few months, barely debated, then imposed in a rush on an unwilling public and a number of unwilling police forces and authorities.
	Let us start with the analysis; the so-called O'Connor report entitled, "Closing the Gap". It is subtitled, "A Review of the 'Fitness for Purpose' of the Current Structure of Policing in England and Wales". The phrase, "Fitness for Purpose", is one of the many pieces of managerial jargon that afflict modern policing. The question is, fit for what purpose? No one could seriously believe that ever bigger and ever more remote police forces will deliver more responsive, effective and accountable policing of the local robberies, muggings, burglaries that intrude into too many people's lives.
	Nevertheless, the analysis in the O'Connor report implies that bigger is better when dealing with major crimes under the umbrella of protective services. The report and the Government response to it are flawed at three critical points: the original analysis; the plan and costing of proposals, such as they were; and the decision and timetable for implementation.
	Frankly, the best thing that I can do is to repeat the House the coruscating opinion of Professor Lawrance, a professor of statistics at Warwick university. He addressed the analysis, which claimed that police forces need to be 4,000-strong to do their job, and found that the quality of the statistical information was questionable and that the statistical treatment of the data and the use of computer-produced statistical elaborations unjustified. In his opinion, there was minimum professional statistical science input in the planning stages, the data analysis, its presentation and the conclusions that were drawn. He concluded by stating:
	"It cannot be presumed that there is a causative relation between protective service effectiveness and force size from rough trends on simple graphs.
	The conclusions drawn in respect of a 4,000 minimum force size almost totally ignore the variability of protective services performance in each force size, and no evidence is provided that this will be small at the 4,000 level.
	In short, there will be an unknown number of good and poor performers in re-formed larger forces."

David Davis: Not for the moment. [Hon. Members: "He is one of the dimmer ones!"] Exactly. The hon. Gentleman does not realise the temptation he places before me with respect to the concept of dimmer Labour Members. However, I will go to another one, the Prime Minister, and the House can make its own judgment. When he was shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sedgefield argued that
	"wholesale amalgamation of the smaller police services . . . will remove local policing further from local people when there is no evidence that it will create a more effective police service."—[Official Report, 5 July 1994; Vol. 246, c. 273.]

Lembit �pik: The right hon. Gentleman is tough with a generous heart. He has made an important point about consultation; does he agree that in many cases the people who oppose the Home Secretary's proposal do not have vested interests? If the Home Secretary listened, he would realise that serious crime is a consideration, but not the only consideration. Many people think that the proposal will seriously harm local crime management. For example, an all-Wales police force will pool resources in high-crime areas, leaving relatively low-crime areas to experience an increase in crime.

Charles Clarke: I think that that description is completely wrong. In the west midlands region, for example, Staffordshire and Warwickshire, which have many rural areas, supporting the changes. Northumbria, a force that has great swathes of rural population, some of which are very sparse, supports the changes. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman would categorise County Durham as a rural or an urban force, but it certainly has substantial rural areas, and it supports the changes. He rightly says that there are issues in West Mercia, but it is not the kind of area that he describes.

Charles Clarke: I agree. That gives me the opportunity to make some progress in addressing precisely that point.
	Sir Ronnie Flanagan describes existing collaborative arrangements as woefully inadequate and adds that they
	fail to deliver sustained resourcing for preventive or developmental work.
	At a different level, Rick Naylor, who leads the Superintendents Association, says:
	The present structure gets in the way of co-operation and working across boundaries. We have tried collaboration and it has not worked.
	There are instances of useful collaborationfor example, in providing training for officers, often in reactive response to civil contingencies. The hon. Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois), who is no longer in his place, rightly mentioned Essex's support for the Met after 7/7. Mutual aid can be very strong and effective. It was required, for example, during the recent fire at the Buncefield oil storage facility, where the Metropolitan police service and Bedfordshire constabulary provided support for Hertfordshire in an effective operation.
	I do not in any sense decry the view that collaboration can offer solutions and benefitsit can. However, the Closing the Gap report demonstrated that that was not a good enough basis for the continuous intelligence and preventive work that is essential for good protective services. The common element of the types of crime that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden describes is that in the modern 21st-century police service we must not only predict and prevent but recognise and react. Intelligence-gathering and preparation are absolutely critical, and we need resources dedicated to proactively gathering intelligence and making links that deal with that in a variety of ways.
	Many of the business cases submitted by forces and authorities state that, under the current structure, if their forces were to experience sustained demand on protective services, local policing would suffer. We need solutions for each area. I agree that it is not a one-size-fits-all model, which is why the regional picture that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden described is not correct. We look at each case and consider what to do in the light of the professional advice that we receive. We are going through options case by case. The first crucial hurdle that every option, whatever it is, has to clear is to demonstrate operational viability in terms of delivering protective services. I hope shortly to be in a position to make an announcement on those options identified as operationally viable, and we will then discuss with forces the best way to proceed.

Jim Cunningham: The west midlands was mentioned earlier. West Midlands police responded tremendously to a bomb scare, for want of a better term, in Birmingham. It showed how well a police force can operate when it gets it act together. However, one of the biggest fears about a merger is that in some areasfor example, Coventry, although we have a big police forceit is often difficult to find somebody in charge on a Saturday and a Sunday, when incidents occur in neighbourhoods. The public expect Members of Parliament to be able to get through to a senior police officer, but it is difficult. Will my right hon. Friend look into that?

David Heath: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I know Dr. Dickie well, because she was chair of the police authority when I was chairman of my police authority in Avon and Somerset, and we worked on the same committees together. I am sure that she will take a sober and sensible view of the cost to her authority.
	What the hon. Gentleman says underlines the fact that the Home Secretary makes great play of the professional consensus that he believes existsbut no such consensus exists. Across the country, only 13 forces want to take part in a merger. Police authorities and forces are not voting with their feet to embrace the new structurethey are rejecting it. Thirteen of them say that they want to stay as stand-alone forces and another 15 have not expressed a preference. It is simply a nonsense to suggest that there is a clear professional view that the proposals are the way forward.
	Even the O'Connor report, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) pointed out in an earlier debate on the issue, was not conclusive. It stated:
	To conclude, the answers to the two questions that prefaced this section are: The current structure of policing probably does not support the efficient and affordable provision of protective services and support services; and yes, there is evidence that changes in that structure might provide a more efficient basis for service provision.
	That is an invitation to open a debate. It is not an invitation to settle the structure of police forces for the next half-century.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Before the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) answers that question, may I point out that many Members have not yet learned the art of a short intervention? Long interventionsparticularly on a day when a great many Members wish to speak and there is a limited amount of timeeat into the time rather badly. Interventions must be brief.

David Heath: I can only tell the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Flello) that if his police commander in Stoke-on-Trent is encountering such problems with Stafford, one wonders what problems he will encounter when he has to ring Birmingham.
	As has been established, the estimated initial costs will be up to 600 million. We must add to that the cost of restructuring all the other parts of the criminal justice system, including those that are coterminous and consonant with the present police authority boundaries. All of them will have to be changed. I think that the 1 billion estimate is not unrealistic for the total cost of the exercise. Then there are the capital costs, which it seems will have to be met by the council tax payer. We are talking about a significant amount, which could be better spent on more police officers for our streets and lanes.
	Let me end by describing some personal experiences from my time as chairman of Avon and Somerset police authority. I should say at the outset that Avon and Somerset was a merged force. Many people in Somerset strongly resent the fact that they are policed by something called the Avon and Somerset police force, based in Portishead rather than in their own area. There is already some resentment about the potential remoteness of Avon and Somerset. Now it may become part of a south-west regional force which it has been suggested will cover 8,000 square milesalthough it is nearer 9,000 if we include the Isles of Scillyand whose northernmost point is nearer to Scotland than to the tip of Cornwall. There are huge demographic variations in a region that runs from the St Paul's area of Bristol to Exmoor, where policing problems are very different. This is, therefore, clearly a difficult and dangerous course to follow.
	When I was chairman of the Avon and Somerset authority, we were able to make links. We shared a helicopter with the Gloucestershire force. That was a very good idea because we did not need two helicopters, one in Gloucester and one in Bristol. Links of that sort make sense.

Michael Ancram: I rise to speak on behalf of my local police force in Wiltshire. In doing so, I know that I am also speaking for other Conservative Members with constituencies in the area, my hon. Friends the Members for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray), who is in his place behind me, for Salisbury (Robert Key) and for Westbury (Dr. Murrison).
	I want to speak about my local force as it is one of the smallest in the country. The right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) spoke about a force's optimum size, but then corrected that to its minimum size. My point is that size does not matter, but delivery does. The Wiltshire force may be small, but its standards of performance are among the highest in the country. It achieves excellent levels of public service and satisfaction, as is shown in the baseline and police performance accountability framework assessments. The force has invested appropriately and prudently, in line with the professional threat assessments, and it has been able to meet demands in respect of major crime, firearms, public order andas I know from my own pastvery important person protection and air support. The force is small but it is effective.
	I do not claim that the Wiltshire force is perfect. No force in the country is, but the merger proposals would throw the baby out with the bathwater and that is wrong way to go.

Michael Ancram: My hon. Friend makes my point for me very effectively. No Conservative Member is suggesting that change is unnecessary or that all police forces work as well as they can. We are talking about what needs to be done, and as I listened to the Liberal Democrat spokesman I found that I agreed with almost everything that he said. The same is true for the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis).
	The matter can be dealt with in ways other than merger, such as the co-operative arrangements that my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary set out. We need the flexibility to develop structures that best serve the needs of local communities. Those needs will differ between communities and areas. Certain overheads can be shared, and joint operations can be more efficient than those undertaken by individual forces.
	I have also looked at the federal model and I am surprised at how that is dismissed by the Government. I have spoken to the Wiltshire police authority about it and was told that the federal approach is less disruptive than mergers, and would be less likely to impact negatively on police performance. Moreover, it was suggested that a change to federalism would work with the grain of local communities and incur lower start-up and associated costs, and could be put in place quickly. If we were starting with a clean sheet of paper, of course, the federal model might not be the best design, but we must begin with the police forces that we have. In that context, the federal model is a good answer that the Home Secretary should study carefully.
	Neither of the two options that I have put forwardthe co-operative and the federal modelsappears to meet the criteria set by the Home Secretary. I listened carefully to what he said about Opposition accusations that the Government had a regionalisation agenda, and I confess that I am sceptical about his denials. Ever since the Government came into office, they have pursued a regional agenda in all sorts of ways. Suddenly, we find that police reform is moving towards a regional agenda and that is clearly a stalking horse for something that has been a major plank of this Government's policy since they were elected.

Paul Truswell: My right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety is aware of the concerns in West Yorkshire. She recently met me, other MPs in the area and various other people, and an Adjournment debate was also held on the issue. However, I make no apology for taking this further opportunity to raise our concerns with her and her team.
	I understand that the Minister is caught between a rock and hard place. Obviously, the Government cannot ignore the advice from Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary about protective services, or the fact that many smaller forces are unable to meet the challenges involved. However, the HMIC report focused narrowly on only one aspect of policing, albeit an important one, without considering how its conclusions might dovetail with issues of neighbourhood policing, community engagement, governance and cost. Those questions remain unresolved and continue to cause great concern.
	My right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety and her colleagues have yet to make a clear and cogent case for why West Yorkshire needs to be merged, especially given that the force meets the criteria of the HMIC report. It appears that its future is being determined not by what is best for our area but on the force's convenient proximity to three smaller forces, which I must add are three smaller and lower-achieving forces. With 5,700 police officers, West Yorkshire easily meets HMIC's minimum size of 4,000 for a strategic force. It demonstrated its capacity to deal with the challenges of terrorism during its recent work on the London bombings.
	A Yorkshire and Humberside amalgamated force would be artificially large, to use the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham). Under the Home Office's criteria, the option of retaining a single force easily represents the best approach for West Yorkshire, which achieved a combined score of 809 for protective services and organisational impact. That would compare with scores of 732 for the merger with North Yorkshire and 713 for a four-force regional merger.
	There are also significant differences in performance across the region. In the protective services assessment recently carried out by HMIC, West Yorkshire was the highest-scoring force in the region. Its combined score was 53, compared with scores of 42, 35 and 32 for South Yorkshire, Humberside and North Yorkshire respectively. There is therefore an understandable fear that there would be a levelling down of services, especially in the early years, rather than West Yorkshire's maintaining its present standards.
	Some collaborative and lead force arrangements with neighbouring forces already operate effectively. I appreciate that HMIC has concluded that such arrangements are not the way forward, but West Yorkshire contends that the perceived shortcomings of such arrangements could be overcome if they were properly structured and formalised, with clear lines of responsibility and accountability. It surely is not logical to dismiss the idea of a more structured federal approach simply on the basis of a critique of existing informal collaborations. Such an approach would provide protective services without incurring the huge costs and the disruption associated with amalgamation. It would also allow West Yorkshire to retain its identity, and to maintain the great progress it has made on local policing priorities and reduction of crime.
	It is difficult to get one's head around what a regional force covering the whole of Yorkshire and Humberside would look like, as policing has never been delivered on such a large organisational scale outside London. Thanks to the record number of police officers under this Government, West Yorkshire has made enormous strides in reducing crime. My own division, Pudsey and Weetwood, has probably made the lion's share of the contribution towards that achievement. The fear is that creation of a huge regional force will inevitably have a downwards knock-on effect, increasing basic command unit size. The costs associated with merger have been calculated at something like 50 million in West Yorkshire, although a great many figures have been bandied about globally and for individual forces.
	The other problem with a major structural change is that people have to relate not only to their local BCU but to the area in which it operates, simply because many important decisions taken at a strategic level have a direct impact on what BCUs and their commanders can deliver.
	Without financial safeguards, the effect of a merger on Yorkshire and Humberside would be to equalise Government funding in the new police region, and the police precept paid by residents. Under a crude equalisation without any smoothing, which would be expensive in itself, both amalgamation options would raise the precept in West Yorkshire by 20 per cent. That is clearly grossly unfair to my constituents and the other people in the area.
	There are other organisational considerations, which time does not allow me to go into in detail. Policing boundaries in West Yorkshire are coterminous with crime and disorder reduction partnerships and other community safety organisations. Each district council has representation on the police authority. The number of councillor members per district means that they are able to engage in conducting their police authority responsibilities as well as the original purposes for which their electors elected them. That simply would not be possible under either amalgamation proposal.
	I hope that the Minister will see from what I have been able to impart in digested form, from the Adjournment debate, and from the discussions and meetings that we have had and no doubt will have in future, why we in West Yorkshire are opposed to an enforced merger. I should like a commitment that she and her colleagues will genuinely look at the case being made by West Yorkshire to retain its present boundaries and operation.

George Young: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell), who, in a thoughtful speech, challenged the thinking behind the merger of his force into a much larger regional authority. The arguments that he deployed will have struck a chord with many hon. Members.
	It is also a pleasure to welcome back to the Back Benches my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) after some 14 years on the Front Bench. The loss to the Front Bench is counterbalanced by the gain for the Back Benches.
	I want to make two points, one general and one local. The general point is that public service reform, wherever it comes, is not cost free. The Prime Minister has talked about the scars on his back, and reform requires the investment of political capital and financial capital. It means taking on established interests and short-term turbulence. It means the diversion of energy from the delivery of front-line services, and it is expensive in set-up costs, relocation, harmonising systems and working practices. It is also destabilising for those involved, many of whom have to bid for their own jobs and then, if successful, move.
	That is not a killer argument against reform, but it is an argument for embarking on reform only after due consideration and proper consultation, and after, where possible, building political consensus behind it, having not only convinced a suspicious public that they will benefit, but convinced oneself as the instigator that it is worth the candle. It also means looking across government to phase in a particular reform along with others. It means dealing first with those with the greatest need and the greatest public support, while putting the others in the in-tray for further reflection.
	The case against the Government is not that it is not possible to construct a case for police amalgamation. One can. The case against them is that their argument simply is not strong enough, as currently proposed, to include amalgamation in their programme. With health and education, there is consensus that investment of extra money needs to be accompanied by structural reform, and there is an appetite for reform of those public services. The pitch has been rolled, not least by Conservative Members as well as Labour ones.
	That is simply not the case with the police forces. There are ways to improve them, and I shall say a word about them in a moment. But they are not along the lines suggested by the Government. My first point, then, is that what the Government propose is a strategic political mistake, as well as wrong for the service under discussion.
	My second point concerns my county, Hampshire. Many of the county's Members of Parliament met the police authority last week, and we listened to what it had to say. The authority put forward a sensible case for leaving Hampshirea large well-run forcealone. Its size is above the minimum standards for grouping proposed by the Government. The total staff is more than 6,000 and likely to rise to more than 7,000 by 2007.
	Hampshire is very different from Thames Valley, with which the Home Office plans an arranged marriage for us. We have a long coastline, unlike Thames Valley. We have a large number of military establishments, unlike Thames Valley. We also have some major ports. But cruciallyto pick up a point made by the hon. Member for Pudseywe are a high-performing force, ranked either third or fifth out of 43 forces, depending on which performance table one uses, compared with Thames Valley which is, unfortunately, 34th.
	The cost of merging with Thames Valley would be 27.1 million, but it would cost nothing to remain as a stand-alone authority. The judgment of the police authority is that protective services may be diluted across the areas of major crime and serious organised crime, causing a decrease in performance or a requirement for extra funding. The Hampshire precept could be increased by 6 per cent., or 10 million per annum. How does that sit with the imperative of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to keep a cap on the local council tax?
	Additional front-end funding would also be required to facilitate the reconfiguration and change management processes. As if that were not enough, the assessment of a merger between the two authorities showed that the ongoing increased costs from year three would be 12.2 million, compared with savings of some 8 million. Any local MP, confronted with such evidence from his police authority on a service as sensitive as law and order, has to stand up and ask the Government where they are going. It is also clear that the policing methodologies in these two forces are different, and the work needed to evolve a coherent strategy across such a diverse area would be complex and protracted.
	I spent 30 days on the police parliamentary schemeall credit to Neil Thorne for pioneering itand saw the workings of the Hampshire constabulary from the inside. We have higher standards. We reject those who would be accepted by other forces, and if officers switch to Hampshire they have to be retrained to our standards. We will inevitably be confronted with a dilution of the high standards that we enjoy and pay for.
	The administrative centre is currently in Winchester, which is the centre of the county, but the likely location of a merged service is Kidlington, some way away. There is legitimate staff concern about travelling time and the remoteness of management. Hampshire is a good force, and I saw that at first hand when I patrolled the streets of Southampton a few months ago. Of course it could be even better, but what frustrates officers includes form filling, frustration with the Crown Prosecution Service and the magistracy, the constraints on how they do their job, and out-of-date buildings. Our energy should be spent freeing them up to use their skills, not on trying to reorganise them.
	On this issue I agree with the Prime Minister, who said at Prime Minister's questions last week that there is an argument for a federated approach for certain services. Hampshire already does that, being one of the greatest exporters of services to other forces in the country. We can do that without amalgamation.
	On Tuesday last week the Home Office sent two independent consultants to meet the authority's strategic forces. The consultants said that Hampshire's stand-alone case was better than any other authority's and that we had made a strong case for staying as we are. The chief constable's professional advice is that the stand-alone option guarantees the best level of service to our communities at minimum cost. I agree with my chief constable, and I hope that the Minister will too.

Adrian Bailey: No, because I have only a short time and I want other people to be able to participate in the debate.
	I accept that some people will have views contrary to the thrust of the report, but the gestation of the report goes back to 1993, under the Conservatives. It is clear that the overwhelming balance of professional police opinion supports the O'Connor report's conclusions. I rather regret the attempt by the University of Warwick to rubbish the statistical basis and the credibility of that report. It has a good pedigree and I shall make my judgment on the balance of professional police opinion, rather than on the opinion of university professors in Warwick.
	My third point is about the arguments on process. I was in local government for a long time and I know that public services will always object to a process when they disagree with the intention behind it or the outcome is likely to involve hard decisions that nobody wants to face. The last police reorganisation took between 1960 and 1974; almost 15 years. We cannot afford to reproduce that process. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to ignore those complaining about the process and get on with it. The O'Connor report reveals that 94 per cent. of gangs are not targeted every year by our police. Those criminal gangs will be rubbing their hands in glee with every year's delay in the implementation of the proposals.
	The proposals have to be judged against three criteria. The first is their impact on neighbourhood policing and accountability. The second is their impact on level 2 crime and the third is affordability. On the first, people in local communities relate to their local police at their local station, not to their police authority. Local people want mechanisms by which they can communicate their views and priorities to the local police command unit, so that policing habits in the area reflect those priorities. That is being done under neighbourhood policing and I am glad to say that it will be implemented in my area from April.
	The idea that there is no connection between neighbourhood policing and level 2 policing must be dispelled. It is essential to have more effective targeting of criminal gangs if we are to reduce the problems in local communities. It is those criminal gangs that are not targeted and put behind bars that feed in the drugs that cause so many problems in local communities. The one complaint I get, even in a large, well organised and well resourced police authority like the West Midlands, is that all too often local bobbies are taken away to deal with major crimes in other areas. If we can set up larger structures that minimise such disruption of local policing, it will be of benefit. The proposals will complement neighbourhood policing, not destroy it.
	The arguments for more strategic forces with specialised units were well made in the report, but there are issues of affordability. Economies of scale have a certain logic but I have seen other reorganisations in local government and public services and, as we all know, translating the theory into reality can create difficulties. The Government need to ensure that the savings that accrue are ploughed back into front-line policing.
	My fear is that, as in all restructuring, the new structures will tend to reflect the priorities of the professionals involved rather than the wishes of the community, so I urge the Minister to ensure that the economies that accrue reflect the priorities of the community, not of the professionals. In terms of affordability and economy, the federal structure suggested by the main Opposition would be a nightmare. There would be an extra layer of bureaucracy, blurred lines of accountability and no savings. We would have the worst of all worlds.
	I urge the Minister to go ahead with the reforms, taking account of the strictures, but to make sure that they work.

Roger Gale: The Home Secretary made much of neighbourhood policing in his opening remarks. Neighbourhood policing is not the community police officer, not the police support officer, not the bobby on the beat; the romantic vision. It is all those people, working with the milkman, the postman, the professionals, such as doctors, lawyers and nurses, the greengrocer, the butcher and the baker. They are the eyes and ears of the community by day and by night, waking and sleeping. It is only by harnessing all those energies that the communitythe neighbourhoodstands a chance of beating the antisocial behaviour, vandalism and drunken violence that beset every neighbourhood in the country.
	The neighbourhood policing initiative is vital; it is the cornerstone in the fight against crime as most people experience it in their everyday life. The Home Secretary said that his proposals would not damage that project. Well, a week ago, the all-party group on policing was addressed by Jerry Kirkby, the neighbourhood policing programme director for the Association of Chief Police Officers, and by Mark Burns-Williamson, the lead member on neighbourhood policing with the Association of Police Authorities. Both were absolutely clear in their view that if the time, money and energy of the police forces of the UK were diverted into doctrinaire reorganisation, mergers and amalgamations, neighbourhood policing would go out of the window, because the resources will not be there.
	The Home Secretary has yet to explain where the 600 million will come from and how it will not be a burden on the money currently paid for the neighbourhood policing programme and other initiatives. If the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), challenges that figure of 600 million, perhaps during the winding-up speech, either he or the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety will put a figure on the proposals, because to date there has been none. The bottom line is that the Government proposals will undermine the one police initiative that theyor to be more exact, the policehave introduced that is actually beginning to work.
	The Home Secretary prayed in aid the current president of ACPO, Sir Chris Fox. He received his knighthood in the new year's honours list, so one assumes that he is probably fairly well-known to the Home Secretary. Ministers on the Treasury Bench need to understand that Chris Fox has said that although he believes in bigger police forces, he does so only if the mergers are fully funded by central Government and if sufficient time, energy and thought go into the process. At present, there is no indication of any such funding or that time and thought have gone into the process. In those circumstances, I think we can take it that it is unlikely that even Sir Chris Fox will support what is suggested.
	Mike Fuller, the chief constable of Kent, my county, is one of the country's best senior police officers. He and Ann Barnes, the chairman of the Kent police authority, are as one in their opposition to Kent being merged with Sussex, Surrey or any other grouping of forces, in the interests of regional or any other form of government. We have already seen the ambulance and fire services go. School reforms will take governance away from schools, and the health authority is going regional. It is clear that the proposals are a regional initiative. The chief constable of Kent has made it plain that he believes that the process, as determined by the Home Secretary, will damage policing in Kent.
	We do not support what Ministers believe to be federation. We need to be extremely careful when using that word. When we say federation we are talking about co-operation, not merger by the back door, so let that not be a Trojan horse. It is fine for police forces to co-operate; in many instances, in emergencies, they already do so. There is scope for more of that co-operation, but there is no scope for the merger of strategic forces such as Kent, with its seaports and airportsthe front line to Europewith any other force.
	Finally, as you know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am a special constable with the British Transport police, so you would expect me to mention that service. The BTP is not a Home Office force, but it is subject to a parallel review undertaken by the Home Secretary. There are suggestions that all or part of it may be merged with one or more of the Home Office forces. That would be a disaster. The BTP is a national police force. It is already strategic; it is free-standing and it works. Of course, there is room for improvement but it ain't broke; please don't try to fix it.

Patrick McFadden: The debate confronts us with a twin challenge: to tackle level 2 crime, as it has been described, while not merely not damaging but improving local neighbourhood policing.
	Closing the Gap made several observations about level 2 crime. It noted:
	Only 13 out of 43 forces have fully resourced specialist murder units.
	Less than 6 per cent. of over 1500 big organised crime gangs are targeted by police in the course of a year
	and that
	some forces' ability to deal with terrorist or domestic extremist incidents would be strained within a matter of hours.
	Some Members say, If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I am saying not that the system is broke, but that the report indicated serious problems that the Government have to address.
	The challenge for Ministers is to propose a configuration of forces that meets the gap and tackles serious and organised crimes such as drug trafficking, terrorism and murder without damaging local policing. Those types of serious crime move across county boundaries, but there are also recognised crime marketsthe phrase used by the Home Secretarywhich may inform the configuration of forces.
	The proposed merger in the west midlands is supported by three of the four forces but, as was pointed out earlier, not by West Mercia.A couple of important questions are posed about what such a merger might mean. Opponents say that it will harm local policing. That is a serious charge, because if it harms local policing it should not be pursued. Neither the public nor police forces should be forced to choose between tackling serious crime and tackling local neighbourhood crime. The public expect the police to be able to do both. Week in, week out in our constituencies we hear about antisocial behaviour, graffiti and under-age drinking. There might be some merit in the arguments of those who oppose mergers if this was the Government's only proposal on policing, but it is not.
	With the basic command unit structure and, crucially, with the enormous expansion in police community support officersI understand that the new total will be 24,000there will be significant expansion in local community policing. In addition, the Government have funded additional police officers in recent years. We do not simply have a proposal to merge forces; we have also placed huge additional emphasis on developing neighbourhood policing, as the Home Secretary said in his opening speech, with individual contacts made much easier between officers and their local communities.
	Of course, there is the question of costs. I accept that there will be start-up costs, as in any proposed merger or reorganisation, but that is not the end of the picture. Certainly, the West Midlands police authority expects that significant savings will be made over about 10 years. However, I would ask the Minister to reflect on the police precept, which varies in different parts of the country and in different parts of the west midlands. I believe that the public will accept the argument that we need to reconfigure forces to tackle serious crime, but that Ministers must be very wary about imposing additional costs on local people to pay for the change.
	These proposals have merit and can go forward. I do not believe that the current situation can be defended in all its forms, because we sometimes force the police to make a choice: when a serious incident occurs, community policing can suffer because officers are pulled away from the community to deal with it. With the twin emphasis on tackling level 2 crime and on neighbourhood policing, we can deal with that problem and move to a form of policing that not only tackles the serious 21st-century crime that the country faces, but gives people the neighbourhood and community policing that they want.

Simon Burns: May I begin by apologising to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to the Minister who will respond to the debate and my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), because, unfortunately, for the first time in 19 years, I will not be able to present to hear the winding-up speeches in a debate in which I have taken part? I apologise profusely for that.
	I pay tribute to the fantastic work done by police officers and their back-up staff in the Essex constabulary on behalf of the people of Essex. We are extremely fortunate in having a dedicated, hard-working group of men and women who work day in, day out, often in thankless circumstances, to police our streets and countryside and to provide a service to the people of the county that I represent. However, we in the county have grave misgivings about the proposals, which are almost being forced on us against our wishes.
	The Prime Minister speaks about the Government listening to the people. We do not get the impression of any sincerity in that statement, given the Home Secretary's comments whenever the subject is discussed. We must take into account the fact that, over the past 20 years or so, policing has changed radically, as have the public's expectations of what they want and expect from their police forces. Sadly, in this day and age, there is a need for more intelligence gathering, whether in respect of terrorism or organised crime. Increasingly, at the very local level, people are demanding that the police take action against vandals, graffiti and other antisocial behaviour.
	We make other demands on our police, whether because of increasing vehicle crime or crimes against homes and property, and we expect them to respond. The police have a very difficult task to carry out, and we politicians make it more difficult if we distract them with unwanted, unnecessary and unjustified plans to modernise them, by reforming them in ways that they do not want to be modernised or reformed.
	Such things are crucial because policing in this country, whether we like it or not, must be done by consentthe consent of the peopleand to gain the support of local communities there must be an affinity and relationship between the police and the public whom they serve. I fear that one of the dangers that we face with the reorganisation is that the Government seem hellbent on the philosophy that big is better, but that divorces local people's affinity from the police force that should serve their needs.
	In Essex, we were originally told by the Home Secretary that he would not accept a stand-alone Essex police force option: it had to be a merger, whether an arranged marriage with the Norfolk and Suffolk forces, or with the forces to west of the county in Hertfordshire or the other surrounding counties. Essex police force is large, like the county of Essex, which is one of the largest counties, geographically, and in terms of population, with just over 1.5 million people.
	We have a bigger population than the already-merged police force of Devon and Cornwall. We also have special features. Of particular relevance in this age of heightened terrorism, we have the third London airport at Stansted. We have a port at Harwich and one of the longest coastlines, where the police constantly try to minimise and prevent illegal immigration. We also have urban areas, mixed with significant rural areas, whose policing needs differ radically from those of urban areas.
	We are being told that we must join forces with another police forcepossibly twothus creating a huge, super-police force that would have no affinity with the local community. The financial impact on Essex council tax payers would be significant, and there would be even greater conflicting policing needs between those of the rural community and the demands of an urban society. That circle cannot be squared by putting us with other counties.
	If the Prime Minister is sincere in saying that he and the Government will listen to the people, let them listen and let them listen closelyif the Minister would be kind enough to stop listening to his Parliamentary Private Secretary. He is not listening; he did not even hear me say that, so I hope that he will read Hansard tomorrow and get the message that way. If the Minister is prepared to listen to the arguments, he will find a consensus in Essex against any proposal other than one that allows Essex police to continue as a stand-alone force.
	The consensus goes from the chief constable, who is a fairly crucial element in the equation, to the police authority and to 15 of the 17 Members of Parliament who represent the area. Only 15 of them have voiced an opinion because the hon. Members for Harlow (Bill Rammell) and for Basildon (Angela E. Smith) are Ministers, and whatever they may think personally in wanting to represent their constituents' interests, they are bound by collective ministerial responsibility, so they cannot voice an opinion. Among the 15 Members of Parliament who are united, there is a Labour Memberthe hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay), who is the only Labour Member for the county, other than the Ministersand a Liberal Democrat, the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell).
	Essex county council is root and branch against the proposals. Most of the borough and district councils in the country are against them, as are the vast majority of members of the public in the county who have voiced an opinion on the subject. So the Minister and the Prime Minister should not pay lip service and use the platitude that they will listen to the argumentsthey should act on them. For once, as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale), instead of driving something forward and pressing for regionalised government, which underlies many of the Government's reforms, they should listen to the people and leave Essex alone to get on with the job of fighting crime without being distracted by other measures.

Graham Stuart: I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Ms Johnson), who gave a speech that was suitable for an ambitious Labour Back Bencher. She said that she supported a regional force for the whole of Yorkshire. She was in the Chamber when the hon. Member for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell) made his thoughtful speech, so I hope that sheand, indeed, Ministerslistened to it. He gave reasons that are grounded in the west Yorkshire community that he represents to explain why he does not believe that a regional force for the whole of Yorkshire would be appropriate.
	I represent a rural constituency in east Yorkshire that contains just four towns: Beverley; Hornsea, which is on the coast; Hedon, which is just to the east of Hull; and Withernsea, which is on the coast. Those communities are a long way from Pudsey and the problems that beset metropolitan areas with which a Yorkshire police force would want to deal. Our fears, which have been expressed already today, can be best summed up by saying that the rural needs of those communities would be left behind because of the draw of metropolitan areas. In fact, the chief constable of Humberside police recently said:
	Experience suggests that the larger metropolitan forces inevitably exert a strong draw on resources often to the detriment of surrounding areas.
	A full Yorkshire force would be too large, too remote and too distant from local people.
	Already, as many hon. Members have shown in this debate, there is fantastic frustration. Anyone who came with me to the Kirkfield estate in Withernsea and knocked on door after door would see that the Government are right to talk about law and order and the challenges of antisocial behaviour, but that they are not right to move structures that can be influenced even further away from those frustrated people. They elect people such as me as Members of Parliament and others as councillors to whom they talk about their No. 1 issuethe daily challenge of needles, antisocial behaviour and disorder in their community. They feel that, year after year, despite who they vote for and the rhetoric that they hear, nothing is done about that. They are suffering from cricked-neck policingthe police, senior and junior, have a leash around their necks that is being pulled by central Government. That is the nub of the problem.
	The Home Secretary was right to address the issue of accountability, but I wonder whether many Labour Members were convinced by what he said. I hope that the Minister, in summing up, will come back to the subject. When the Home Secretary said that there needed to be local accountability, he first mentioned national standards. One could laugh about that if it was not so symptomatic of this Government's approach. Their idea of local accountability is greater enforcement of national standards. The right hon. Gentleman then talked about roles for overview and scrutiny committees, but they have not worked in the health service. They have been unable to exert influence or to address the threat to local health services in communities such as Hornsea and Withernsea. The Home Secretary finished his piece on how he would drive local accountability with the point that there was always his intervention.
	Of the four key points that the Home Secretary made, two were about intervention at national level, which will not give any reassurance to people in Withernsea and Hornsea, or in villages such as Patrington, where I attended a meeting of the parish council last week specifically on the subject of policing. The local police inspector told us what we already knewthat very often there are just two officers serving the whole of the area. The prospect of unfunded, large-scale mergers, with costs possibly as high as 1 billion, dragging even more resources away from front-line policing and leaving rural communities even more denuded of cover is frightening to those who are already frustrated with the political process.

Mark Harper: I shall make one brief point and one substantial point. First, the Home Secretary has discussed accountability and the link between crime and disorder reduction partnerships and district councils. In my area, for example, the basic command units are the Forest of Dean and Gloucester, which cover a district council area and a city council area. Those areas are distinct and different, and it would not be satisfactory if they were served by a single BCU.
	Secondly, I want to discuss the alternative to mergers, which is collaboration between independent forces. As the Minister knows, the chief constable has provided examples of services that are currently shared in the south-west, where independent police forces are already co-operating on regional tasking and co-ordinating special branch intelligence and air support, which, as the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) has said, Gloucestershire has shared with Avon and Somerset since 1996. Indeed, a new regional arrangement has been implemented on the provision of helicopter pilots. The implementation of Airwave, procurement, drug-testing services and forensic physicians have also been shared among services, saving the region 1.4 million per annum. The success of joint procurement shows that the approach outlined in Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary's document What price policing? can work. Collaboration and sharing require commitment and belief, but they provide results without the up-front cost of amalgamation.
	There is another example of shared services between the emergency services in Gloucestershire. Since 2002 a joint police, fire and ambulance control room has operated from Quedgeley in the constituency of the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda), who is sitting on the Front Bench now. The facility is one of three nationally, proves its worth every day, and is popular in the county.
	Shared services and the collaborative model offer the Government a way out. As has been said, mergers are popular and professionally supported in some areas, but where they are not popular, I urge the Minister to consider the collaborative model. The chief constables and the police authorities in Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Dorset are working on a proposal to retain those forces' independence and have them make a great commitment to working together, which is a good alternative model. I urge the Minister to examine that alternative, and hope that she concludes that it is right for those three counties.

Nick Herbert: The Home Secretary began by suggesting, incredibly, that the majority of police authorities support his position, so it is worth reminding the Minister of the facts. By the 23 December deadline that the Home Secretary set, of the 41 police forces affected by the proposed restructuring, 14 refused to express a preferred option and another 14 stated that their preferred option was to stand alone. By my reckoning, that means that 28 out of the 41 police authorities68 per cent.have rejected the Home Secretary's proposals. Only seven police authorities signed up to the full regional mergers as proposed by the Home Office, and in every case at least one other authority in the region opposed the plans. It is fantasy politics to claim, as the Home Secretary did, that police authorities support what he is doing.
	The Home Secretary also prayed in aid the comments of several chief constables. However, for every chief constable who has publicly spoken out in favour of restructuring, others have opposed it. Opinion is divided. I could quote the chief constable of Dyfed-Powys, who said that the Government's plans were
	verging on a shambles
	and
	Alice Through the Looking Glass stuff.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper) mentioned Gloucestershire. The chief constable of that force, who is also the head of finance and resourcing at the Association of Chief Police Officers, said:
	Restructuring will be a highly risky undertaking, financially, operationally and organisationally.
	The Home Secretary signally failed to deal with what my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) said about the cost of the proposals, which the Association of Police Authorities estimates to be 525 million and rising. The Government have so far offered only 125 million to defray those costsless than a quarter of the amountand we know that that is not new money. There is a 400 million shortfall. I have repeatedly asked the Minister to tell me how that shortfall is to be funded; perhaps she will tell me now. It is clear that local taxpayers are going to pick up the bill. That means that police precepts will rise by, we calculate, 21 per cent. to meet the 400 million gap. That is against the background of rising council tax and a police precept that has already doubled since the Government came to power.
	The last time that I raised this, the Minister said that she did not accept the APA's estimates. I have to tell her that we will be sceptical about the Government's figureswhen they finally get round to publishing themin the light of the National Audit Office's refusal yesterday to sign off the Home Office's books because it could not properly account for its 14 billion annual budget. I remind the Minister that in some parts of her region, the north-west, the 47 million cost of restructuring will result in council tax bills rising by as much as 32, while in the Home Secretary's region they will rise by as much as 30.
	At Prime Minister's questions, the Prime Minister has repeatedly expressed his support for the option of sharing services. Today the Home Secretary repeated his opposition to that solution. We might have known that that was the Home Secretary's position, because he has written to us all; we received the letter today. He has published a glossy leaflet about what he intends to do with the police. When he is asked how serious crime is going to be combated, he replies:
	Establishing larger forces with greater capacity to investigate serious crime.
	It is a done deal, is it not? No sooner had the Prime Minister made his comments in support of sharing services by police forces, than the Ministerwho is the Minister for respectgave a briefing to the lobby to say that that was not the case. I suggest that that was not very respectful to the Prime Minister.
	The Home Office appears to be in a state of confusion about what is happening. In a briefing from Home Office officials to members of local authorities earlier this month for a conference entitled the Innovation Forum, page 2 begins:
	This is not about mergers.
	If it is not about mergers, what is it about? Do the Government have a coherent view of whether they are willing to consider sharing services? The Association of Police Authorities has asked them to consider that. Perhaps we could have a straight answer to that question.
	When the Prime Minister was asked about amalgamations, he said:
	It is not a question of forcing them through.[Official Report, 25 January 2006; Vol. 441, c. 1426.]
	Clearly, that is exactly what the Home Secretary plans to do, because amalgamations do not have the unanimous support of police authorities in any region of the country. If the Govt are determined that amalgamations are the answer, they can only proceed by compulsion. They should stop pretending that some sort of voluntary arrangement is possible, because police authorities do not want it.
	The Government's reluctance to allow mergers across regional boundaries, which they confirmed again today, reveals their agenda. The Deputy Prime Minister's plans for regional government were defeated overwhelmingly in the first referendum in the north-east, but the Government are proceeding with regionalism by stealth. That happens with planning decisions, the replacement of local fire control rooms with regional centres, in the national health service and now with the police.
	I am sorry that Home Secretary is not here, because I wanted to emphasise to him that big is not always beautiful.

Hazel Blears: No, I have dealt with the issue.
	I also want to emphasise some of the facts that relate to our proceeding in this way. Although we have talked about structures, accountability and governance, which are important issues, I would not want us to neglect the real policing imperatives. Only 13 out of 43 forces have fully resourced specialist murder units. Fewer than 6 per cent. of the more than 1,500 big organised crime gangs are targeted by police in the course of a year. Only seven out of 43 forces deploy special branch, together with its neighbourhood policing teams, providing that essential community intelligence to enable us to prepare for and counter terrorism. Those are real, substantive policing issues, and that is the agenda at stake.
	I want to deal with some of the points made during the debate. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome said that we shared some common ground. He is keen to sustain neighbourhood policing, as are all my right hon. and hon. Friends. But he should think carefully; unless there is some coming together, so that we have larger forces with capacity and resilience, we will not be able to sustain neighbourhood policing for the long term as we want to do. We need to consider the whole of the police force's business; otherwise, neighbourhood policing will sit on top of our current organisation, and it will be easy to strip out in years to come. I mean to make sure that that does not happen.
	I very much welcome the support of my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), who is in his place. I particularly welcomed his analysis about federation leading to blurred lines of accountability and the possibility of even more costs and bureaucracy if we have to have an extra layer on top of our existing forces.
	The right hon. and learned Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) said that he could ascertain from the Home Secretary's body language that he was about regionalisation. I have never seen regionalised body language in my life. [Laughter.] We have already agreed that big is not necessarily beautiful, and that size does not matter.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell), in a thoughtful contribution, set out his genuine concerns. I assure him that I will examine extremely carefully the case made in relation to West Yorkshire. I have met him and other colleagues, and I will continue to give that issue extremely close attention.
	My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, West (Mr. Bailey), in an excellent contribution, also spoke about support for neighbourhood policing, and urged us to get on with taking action. It is important that we do not have an extended period of blight and uncertainty, which will provide an opportunity for morale to dip, and I do not want that to happen. When we make our decisions, there is a need to press on with our action.
	I welcome the support of my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mr. McFadden), who knows the challenges involved in Closing the Gap to tackle serious crime. He thinks that the public should not have to choose between tackling local crime and serious crime, and he is absolutely right. The mission for the police service is now extremely wide. We therefore need an organisation that is fit for purpose, so that we can deploy our resources to tackle all the threats that face us.
	I welcome the support of my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Ms Johnson), who brought her experience in London to the debate. As she said rightly, the community's relationship is with the BCU commander, and not necessarily with the larger force. That relationship will be key in making sure that local people have the ability to set priorities.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) gave us some tremendous support. I am delighted that, while her area has a high-performing force and low crime, she still recognises the sense of coming together, sharing resources and considering a collective framework.
	Several other Members have made contributions. I recognise the concerns about rural areas. As Members will know, I do not represent a rural area, but I am concerned that every part of the countryrural and urban, market town and inner cityshould have a neighbourhood policing team made up of police officers, community support officers, special constables and neighbourhood wardens that is not abstracted when there is a double or triple murder, a major demonstration, or, heaven forbid, another terrorist incident. At the moment, with small forces, the pressure to draw those officers away from the neighbourhood is intense, and that will get worse as serious crime is more of a threat. The way in which to sustain neighbourhood policing in rural as well as urban areas is to ensure that we have large enough forces to maintain that strategic capacity and resilience.
	We will of course consider the ideas that have been advanced about federation. I am not convinced that it can provide the solution that we seek, but we will certainly examine the cases that are put to us. However, I say this to Members who see federation as a magic bullet to deal with the problems that we face; it could produce blurred lines of accountability, a chief constable who was not responsible for all areas of crime, an extra layer of governance and another command team. It could cost each area 1 million if a separate command team had to deal with serious and organised crime.
	There is no simple solution. These are complex issues that require a complex response. We are determined, however, that the steps we take will improve policing in every part of the country, so that we can protect the people to whom we owe a responsibility. I hope that Members throughout the House will recognise that the responsibility of us all, not just Government, is to consider not only individual forces but how to secure the best possible system, which will serve us now and also in 15 and 20 years' time and will take account of the real challenges of 21st-century policing.

Chris Grayling: If the hon. Gentleman is patient, he will find that my thesis is not that the Government are spending inadequate sums. I am asking the Government how it is possible to spend so much extra money on the transport systemthe motion refers specifically to the amounts that are being spentyet fail to deliver so many of the things that were promised.
	There are many examples of that. We know about Crossrail. Targets for rail freight have been abandoned and the upgraded links to ports such as Felixstowe have been downgraded. The subsidy for rail freight has been cut in half. There were plans to allow suburban rail lines to take more passengers by adding extra coaches and lengthening platforms, but the Government paid South West Trains to take out a carriage from planned new trains because they abandoned plans to lengthen platforms. That was doubly ironic because one of the explicit promises in the 10-year plan was to cut congestion and ensure that no passenger stood for more than 20 minutes. You will know from travelling in from East Anglia, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as do many of us from travelling on trains around London and the experiences of our constituents, that that aspiration is a million miles from reality in far too many places. Worryingly, as I said to the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey), passengers are standing on inter-city services, too.
	There was a much vaunted promise to open 25 new light rail lines. I understand that the Secretary of State has taken a hard look at the economics of trams and has reached the view that guided busways are better light rapid transit systems than trams. However, if we accept that he has taken that decision, where are all the guided busway schemes? I asked him in a written question last week how many of the 25 rapid transit schemes were on the way. A couple have opened so far and there are about six more in development, although it is by no means certain that they will be open by 2010another promise broken.
	The Secretary of State made a whole string of promises on roads to put flesh on the bones of the general announcements in the 10-year plan, but many are back on hold again. The Stonehenge tunnel was given the go-ahead in 2002, but put on hold again last week. Improvements to the M6 were announced in 2002, but there is no sign of them happening. Improvements to the M1 are on hold. The link between the M6 toll and the M54 that was announced in 2003 was still a matter of debate during Transport questions last week. Improvements to the A14 were announced in 2003, but we have seen nothing yet. Smaller projects, such as the Kiln lane link in my constituency, were announced three or four years ago, but are now back on hold again. There have been lots of promises and press releases, but the bulldozers remain firmly in their garages. The Government pledged to treble the number of cycling trips in the 10-year plan, but the number of trips is falling, not rising.

Alistair Darling: I beg to move, To leave out from House to the end of the Question, and add instead thereof:
	acknowledges the importance of providing a clear strategy of sustained long-term investment and forward planning to address decades of under-investment in the transport system; welcomes the further investment and new strategic framework provided by the subsequent Future of Transport White Paper; recognises the achievements since the 10 Year Plan was published, including the highest number of people using the railways since the 1960s and the delivery of major strategic road schemes, with further schemes either under way or due to start before April 2008; acknowledges that one of the main reasons for the continuing pressure on transport networks is that the United Kingdom is enjoying the longest period of sustained economic growth for more than 200 years; and supports the Government's determination to take the decisions which will be required to meet these pressures and put UK transport on a sustainable footing, including tackling the environmental impacts of transport, trialling road-pricing and building on the improvements in rail performance, as well as planning for long-term transport needs.
	I am grateful to the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) for giving us another opportunity to debate transport, thus enabling me to point out the differences in approach between the Conservatives and ourselves. I hoped that he would devote rather more than the final page of his speech to what the Conservatives would do differently, but one never knows from one day to the next what Conservative policy is, so he is bound to be cautious. In the four years that I have served as Secretary of State, I have lost count of the number of shadow Secretaries of State that have been and gone. I live in hope that we will hear just one idea from one of them about what we ought to do in future.

Tom Brake: The hon. Gentleman raised a similar possibility in Transport Questions. It is a valid point and I hope that the Minister of State will be able to give us both some comfort about overcrowding and what passengers can look forward to in years to come.
	I am grateful to the Thomas Cook agency for producing a helpful report that confirms that, for 10, people can travel 300 miles in Slovakia and 200 in Italy, but only 38 in Britain. They can go three times further than that in France. For 10, people in Britain can get to the next county if they are lucky, whereas in most European nations they can get to the next country.
	The Government's second transport objective was to improve the accessibility, punctuality and reliability of local and regional transport systems, and to look at buses. The Secretary of State was asked about rural bus services today and the second target on bus services related to growth in patronage in every region. According to the Department's autumn performance report, that target remains challenging, which I think is code for, We will miss it by a mile. According to a parliamentary written answer, the number of passengers is down 13 per cent. in the north-east, 10 per cent. in the west midlands, 9 per cent. in the east of England, and 9 per cent. in Yorkshire and the Humber.
	The only comfort for the Government is performance in London, which is very good. Hon. Members have congratulated the Mayor on his congestion charging policy, which, incidentally, the Liberal Democrats were almost alone in supporting before its introduction. It was only once the Government had the comfort of knowing that that had been a success that they were willing to go on the record to congratulate the Mayor.

John Redwood: The Secretary of State made a sensible change to the Government's approach to transport when he began his difficult job. His predecessor thought that it was possible to shift a large number of people off the road on to the train to solve environmental and capacity problems. The Secretary of State quickly realised that we are short of capacity of all kinds. He realised that the fundamental transport problem facing the country is insufficient capacity on the roads and railways to deal with the current level economic activity. That problem will become much more acute in the years ahead, assuming reasonable growth in the economy.
	To give some figures, if we grow at European levels of only 2 per cent. per annumit is feared that we will go down to such levelswe must make capacity available for a two-thirds increase in the journey miles travelled in the next 20 years. If we return to Anglosphere levels of achievement and secure 3 per cent. growth, or if we return to our old trend rate of 2.5 per cent., there will be an increase of between 75 per cent. and 100 per cent. in the number of miles travelled by people as all those extra goods are taken to market and extra services are provided, and as more people travel to work and go about their business spending their extra leisure pounds. They will want access to facilities, so they will need more transport.
	The Secretary of State will agree that we want to live in a vibrant and growing economy, which naturally means more transport. I therefore find the Liberal Democrats' attitude absurd. They presumably want to live in a prosperous country, but they say that we cannot make more capacity available in transport alone. They rightly argue that we have to make more hospitals available for the ill, and that we have to make more schools available for children. They believe that we cannot make more transport capacity available, but that would mean that we would not have a growing vibrant economy and people would not be able to travel to school, hospital or work. How on earth do they think that we can manage if we do not tackle the underlying capacity problem?
	The Secretary of State inherited a grand scheme, with a total spend of 180 billion consisting of a mixture of public and private funds. I remember criticising the scheme when it was announced for two main reasons. First, the modal shift could obviously not be achieved on the scale that the right hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mr. Byers), the then Secretary of State, imagined. The new Secretary of State has recognised that. Secondly, I did not think that 180 billion was nearly enough expenditure over a 10-year period to tackle our serious capacity problems. I want much more to be spent, but we can fund that increase by raising private capital. We do not need to increase the public component.
	By way of contrast to the 180 billion so-called transport strategy, outside that document was all the spending that individuals and companies are undertaking on motor vehicles. People are buying cars, vans, lorries by the thousands every month and that, I compute, probably adds up to more than 180 billion over the 10-year period that people will spend on new vehicles, leaving aside the trade in second-hand vehicles. So we know that there is plenty of money available for transport. People must spend that money. It is often their only way of getting around, of getting goods to market or of getting to work on time, particularly for those who work unsocial hours, so people make that money available.
	I want the Government to provide more opportunities for private money to be made available to solve the capacity problem. I am a great fan of a recent scheme which was begun under the Conservatives and was finished under the Labour Government; a bi-partisan effort. I refer to the toll motorway to the north of Birmingham. It is a very good scheme. It provides flexible tolls so that motorists pay more if they travel at a popular time of the day or night, and less if they travel at a less popular time. Perhaps the tolls need to be made more flexible to get maximum capacity use. I am sure that will happen, as there is an economic incentive for it. I would like to see the Government come up with opportunities for the private sector to start tackling the big capacity problems on our road network through that kind of private finance for new facilities on our roads.
	I see from the document that the Secretary of State has made a number of changes, compared with the original 10-year plan. Some of his changes have been sensible. He is right that some of the tram and mass transit systems that were proposed do not offer good value for money, and some of them could be dangerous. If people wish to introduce a tramway system into a busy and congested city or town centre on existing roads, it can be extremely dangerous. That, after all, is why the original trams and trolleybuses were taken out some years ago, because there were conflicts between pedestrians and cyclists and other road users, and there were some very bad accidents.

Stephen Hammond: This has been a strategically important debate, featuring interesting contributions from a number of Members.
	Opening the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) got to the heart of what we were askingif the Government are spending so much money, where is it going and why are they not delivering on their 10-year plan? The fundamental failure of the plan lies in the fact that it announced much and promised much, but had no short-term or long-term context in relation to our country's economic needs or, indeed, its need for a sustainable environment. The Secretary of State clearly disagrees with me because he described it as a piece of strategic thinking. It was not his piece of strategic thinking, though; it was that of the Deputy Prime Minister, and given that relatively inauspicious start it was probably destined to fail.
	In his foreword to the document dealing with the 10-year plan, the Deputy Prime Minister wrote that he was
	developing an integrated transport policy to tackle the problems of congestion and pollution.
	On congestion, the facts are that the number of motor vehicles registered has risen from 27 million to 32 million. The number of passenger kilometres travelled has risen from 730 billion to 797 billion, which is almost entirely due to extra car miles, as nationally bus usage is down by 7 per cent. Investment in road infrastructure is now 4.2 billion, but under the Conservatives it reached 6.2 billion. If I quote the Government's figures correctly, investment in our trunk road systemmentioned by several Members todayreached its 1993 level only this year. As we have all agreed, expenditure on the rail infrastructure is now three times higher in real terms, but the question that we have asked several times without receiving a proper answer is, Where is all that investment going?
	The all-operators public performance measure, which was just under 90 per cent. in 19971998, is now only about 85 per cent. The train operating companies expect capacity to grow by about 2 per cent. between now and 2014, but usage is expected to grow by 38 per cent.

Stephen Ladyman: The hon. Gentleman says that the Highways Agency website was inaccurate, but we checked that during the debate and found it to be entirely accurate. He needs to have a long talk with his researchers about which old documents they used for his speech.
	I shall give a few examples of why I think that the Opposition's view of our road programme is breathtaking. Between 1990 and 1994, the then Conservative Government announced that a number of road schemes would be scrapped. They included the Greater Manchester western and northern relief road, the Langford turn in Bedfordshire, the Blackwall tunnel interim scheme on the A13, the A31 Stoney Cross junction improvements in Hampshire, the A59 Copster Green bypass in Lancashire, the M1-M62 link road between Wakefield and Kirklees, the western environmental route in the London boroughs of Hammersmith, Fulham and Kensington and Chelsea, and the Exeter northern bypass. All those schemes were cancelled by the Conservatives.
	The previous Conservative Government obviously got the taste for cancelling road schemes, so in 1994 they announced a review. They then cancelled the schemes on the M12 and M606, and the A1 to M1 to Scratchwood link. They also cancelled schemes on the M1, A5, A6, A6/A46I could go on. The list of schemes that the Conservative scrapped in 1994 is very long. There are 49 of them in all and I could use my entire time talking about them.
	Like an addict who had had his first shot of some drug, the Conservatives realised it was rather fun to cancel road schemes, so back they came in 1995 to cancel schemes on the M1, the M5, the M23, the M25 and more. I could go on even longer on this list because there were 77 of them. If that were not bad enough, they came back again in 1996 to scrap schemes on the M1, the M3, the M4, the M5the list goes on and on. They scrapped no fewer than 107 road schemes that year alone. Yet they have the brass neck to tell us we are not committed to road building where it is necessary and important.
	Of the 40 schemes that we identified for the targeted package of improvements, 38 are on target to be delivered by 2010. Two remain challenging. The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) himself identified the Stonehenge programme, and I merely ask him whether he would have given the go-ahead to a 500 million tunnel under Stonehenge without looking again at the options. We called a review when we realised it would have been cheaper to move the stones and the mountain they were sitting on.
	The Liberal Democrats were of course able to critique both other parties' transport policies without giving any constructive suggestions of their own. Three leadership candidates are going round the country at the moment with three very different transport proposals. Those of the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) seem to consist of saying that the only transport modality that should be available to any of us is walking around in open-toed sandals. The only transport contribution so far from the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) has been his saying that he will drive a little less often in his classic Jag. The contribution of the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) has been to say that no matter how we decide motorists should pay to use the roads in future, they should pay in euros.
	All that hardly adds up to a coherent package. When the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) stands there giving us a list of transport proposals that would cost billions and billions of pounds, yet says that he agrees with the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife about the Liberal Democrats' public spending commitments, I have to remind him exactly what it was his right hon. and learned Friend said. He said:
	I am clear there is now no great public mood to increase the overall burden of taxation.
	He added that current public spending was
	without precedent and must now level off.
	Yet the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington stood there telling us about scheme after scheme that he wants to move forward.
	The hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen) talked about Metrolink, telling us how we should move forward on that. I have to tell him that two of his neighbour Liberal Democrats have sat in my office in the past few weeks telling me we should go ahead with a 1 billion road scheme in their constituencies. Where does all the money come from? Where would the Liberal Democrats propose to find the money?

Patrick Mercer: I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) for securing the debate, to the Minister for allowing me to speak and to the hon. Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping) for being present to lend the necessary cross-party support to a crucial scheme.
	I hold the Minister in extremely high regard. The last time he visited my constituencyI should point out that he is the first and the only Labour Minister to visit the constituency since 1997he came at my behest because of a problem at the hospital in Newark. His help was much appreciated. I still quote him for the sense and balance that he showed on that matter.
	If I may, I invite the Minister now to join me in driving along the A46. The last time he came to my constituency, he modestly said he did not know that part of the world. If he would like to join me on the stretch of road that my right hon. and learned Friend so clearly described, we will be able to count the floral tributes by the side of the road, the near accidents that we will probably see as we drive along the 17 miles from Widmerpool to Newark, and we will be able to observe how difficult it is to turn out from one of the villages in my right hon. and learned Friend's constituency and latterly in part of my constituency as the road approaches Newark. It is a hideously dangerous road.
	There have been 57 casualties in the past five months on that stretch of road. As my right hon. and learned Friend pointed out, that is particularly galling in view of the fact that last Saturday morning I was in Newark town hall looking at beautiful computer-generated videos, excellent aerial photographs, very clever designs, maps, pictures and so onI see that the hon. Member for Sherwood has been through the same processwhich show, as my right hon. and learned Friend said, a castle in the air. It is hard for me to go among my constituents, to move with them and to say, Great plans. They look super, don't they? But it ain't going to happen.
	Driving along that road in 1965 as a boy with my father, I remember him saying, This road has got to be sorted out. It's dangerous. Those were not quite the words that he used, but the Minister can probably imagine what he said. As a theological student before the war, my father had found that road dangerous. At the time, we knew there was a scheme in place to get the road sorted out.
	In the previous debate I heard the Minister, quite understandably, coming out with a long litany of failed road schemes under Conservative regimes and now, clearly, under Labour. I do not make that point to the hon. Gentleman. I am not interested in what has gone before. Mistakes have been made. However, I am deeply interested in the safety and welfare of my constituents in Newark.
	There are those who say that if we dual the road, we will make it more dangerous because speeds will go up. I ask the Minister to look at the casualty levels at Brough on the Lincoln side of Newark, where the road has already been dualled. The fatalities, I am delighted to say, have fallen to nil, and the number of injuries has gone down considerably. Nothing like that has happened on the A46, except for the space that now has safety cameras installed on it up towards Farndon. Although I am delighted to have such schemes put in place, nothing, I fear, will substitute for a proper dual carriageway.
	I would be awfully grateful if the Minister applied the same balance and reason to that stretch of road as he did to Newark hospital. I would be grateful if he were to remain untrammelled by the bureaucracy that accompanies any Government.
	Will the Minister accept my invitation to look at the road? In due course, will he accept the petition that we have started in Newark? Will he apply his common sense and intelligence and understand that this scheme must not be dealt with at the regional level? The scheme is of national importance, and it is of extreme economic importance to Newark. Will he use his good offices to make sure that he makes the sensible decision? I know that I can rely on him.

Stephen Ladyman: I acknowledge the presence of my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling; I had not realised that he had joined us in the Chamber. I take my hon. Friend's point, but I have to repeat that the road does not meet the strict interpretation of the criteria. However, I heard what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said about the need to look at the criteria a little more flexibly. I am certainly prepared to go away and investigate what we might be able to do in that respect.
	The Secretary of State invited the regions to provide us with priorities for various schemes as part of our wider policy of taking advice from local people who know where the priorities should be. The Department received the advice from the East Midlands region yesterday. It presented many challenges, and the region has not made the scheme one of its early time scale projects. Instead, it suggested a later time scale than that that the Highways Agency originally proposed. However, the region said that it wanted to explore alternative funding sources with the Department and the Highways Agency.
	Given that I have only just received the advice and the serious difficulties that the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe outlined today, I do not believe that I should comment further at this stage. I simply repeat that I have some sympathy with the points that have been made. I am prepared to consider how we can help with the scheme. However, I can make no promises because I am, to some extent, trying to squeeze a quart into a pint pot.